516 ARTS announces this year’s Fulcrum Fund award winners! 516 ARTS responded to the pandemic and the Fulcrum Fund played a key role in the Covid-relief effort for New Mexico artists. In 2020 and early 2021, the Fulcrum Fund disbursed $321,000 to 255 artists and art-spaces statewide, thanks to the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, major new support from the Frederick Hammersley Foundation for the Arts, and community contributions. This year, a total of $93,600 has been awarded to 13 New Mexico-based visual artists to support the development and presentation of independent, artist-led projects and programs. Examples of funded projects this cycle include new exhibitions, the ongoing work of an experimental arts venue or collective, public art projects, one-time events and performances, publications directly related to the visual arts, on-line projects, artist residencies and film festivals, to name a few. This year’s guest jurors were Laura Copelin (MOCA Tucson & Ballroom Marfa), Kathleen Ash-Milby (Navajo), Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, and Marvella Muro (Self Help Graphics, Los Angeles, CA).
The Fulcrum Fund is an annual grant program created and administered by 516 ARTS as a partner in the Regional Regranting Program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts with additional support from the Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation. The Fulcrum Fund serves as an essential support structure to enable artists to expand existing work and explore new directions
in creating and showcasing projects that inspire curiosity, engagement and dialogue. It is intended to be a springboard for artistic processes that are experimental and forward thinking, while celebrating projects that may not fit into the traditional museum and gallery systems.
Out of 105 submissions from 18 cities throughout New Mexico, the jurors selected the following 13 proposals:
- JC Gonzo, Santa Fe • Cuidado
An independent, self-published zine featuring emerging artists based in the Southwest region of North America.
- Tytianna Harris (Navajo), Albuquerque • American Indians of the Southwest
Abstract-experimental textile work examining the life ways and design of Indigenous cultures in our area.
- Jessica Krichels, Albuquerque • Pressing Letters: A Collaboration of Literary Broadsides
Handmade literary broadsides on a letterpress created by collaborations among poets and visual artists. - Akilah Martinez (Navajo), Gallup • DigiNewMex
A virtual environment that connects New Mexicans through a magical immersive digital landscape full of 3D artistic interpretations of traditional New Mexican and Indigenous food.
- Dylan McLaughlin (Diné), Albuquerque • Wires Under Tension
An experimental music composition and performative installation meditating on the acoustic ecology of place, giving space to hear and feel what the acoustic world is speaking.
- Rosemary Meza-DesPlas, Farmington • Miss Nalgas USA 2022
A performance artwork featuring a faux beauty competition for self-identifying Latinas over 50, examining topics of colorism, self-identification, border crossing, and Latinidad.
- Karl Orozco & Michael Lopez, Albuquerque • Risolana
A community risograph studio in Albuquerque’s South Valley, celebrating the power of printmaking as a tool for community dialogue where personal and collective expression meet. Additional components include a residency, workshop, artist monograph, and exhibition.
- Nayeli Navarro & Elsa Lopez, Pecos • Weaving back to Center/Tejiendo de regreso al centro
A creative, multilingual, community art practice that revitalizes the traditional art form of Backstrap Weaving, with weavers from across New Mexico contributing to a culminating octagonal human/weaving sculpture and exhibition.
- Adrian Pinnecoose (Navajo and Southern Ute), Albuquerque • Collective Equilibrium
Highlighting digital applications and fabrication in Indigenous Art, this project uses 3D software, 3D-printing, laser-cutting, and graphic design culminating in the Historical Centennial SWAIA Fashion Couture Show.
- Sara Rivera, Albuquerque • Entre nacer y caminar
A large-scale text sculpture made from cast gypsum toys found in Albuquerque’s early childhood centers and home-based daycares, using text sourced from their oral histories and interviews, to be installed site-specifically in the childcare wing of the new PCA social enterprise center.
- Justin Rhody, Santa Fe • No Name Cinema
No Name Cinema is a microcinema dedicated to showcasing experimental, avant-garde and underground film and video rarely seen elsewhere. It fosters community, conversation, and support to underground culture by showcasing experimental, avant-garde, and underground film and video, visual art exhibitions, and a bi- monthly chess and jazz club.
- We Are Longing for a Future (a collective), Albuquerque
A multi-phased project featuring a group of queer, trans, and Indigenous artists collaboratively addressing the problematic and eroding narrative of a linear “future” of “progress” fueled by consumption, displacement of peoples and species, and the commodification of the Earth.
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Adrian Wall (Jemez Pueblo) • Ponderosa, Reconnecting – Time, Self and the Celestial
A site-specific, mixed-media sculptural installation inspired by the earth works and technology of the artist’s Pueblo Ancestors, that explores our natural relationship to celestial concepts of time.
ABOUT 516 ARTS:
516 ARTS is a non-collecting contemporary art museum celebrating thought-provoking art in the here and now. Our exhibitions and programs feature local, national and international artists and seek to inspire curiosity, risk-taking, and creative experimentation. 516 ARTS offers fresh perspectives on relevant issues and cultivates engagement between diverse artists and communities. Programs include exhibitions, collaborations with museums and organizations around the region and beyond, discussions, lectures, workshops, public art projects, youth programs, and performances. Learn more at 516arts.org.
ABOUT THE FULCRUM FUND
The Fulcrum Fund is an annual grant program created and administered by 516 ARTS as a partner in the Regional Regranting Program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Since its inception
in 2016, the Fulcrum Fund has awarded a total of $645,600 to 313 artists, artspaces and organizations statewide and is one of 32 re-granting programs developed and facilitated by organizations throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico.